News

The Earth’s geological timeline is an essential tool for understanding how it has changed, and planetary scientists have sought to replicate it for planets and moons we have explored. However, the existing timeline for the Moon was created when we knew a lot less about its history, and is increasingly dated. A new effort attempts […]

Think of a lion; think of a gorilla; think of an otter. In your head, are the males bigger than the females? Well, a new study is set to challenge over 100 years of bias in this area of research. By looking at over 400 mammal species, the team found some surprising results – in […]

You’ve likely come across the Lorem Ipsum placeholder text at some point in your life. A typical passage, designed to be unintelligible, goes likes this: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi […]

Point Nemo in the southern Pacific Ocean is said to be the most remote location on the planet. When ships pass through it, they are 2,689 kilometers (1,671 miles) away from the nearest land. When the International Space Station passes overhead, the nearest humans to the sailors are the astronauts on board the station, given […]

It’s a bit of a cliché to say empires rise and fall, but have you ever wondered what the oldest empire in recorded history was? Well that title seems to go to the Akkadian Empire, the first known multinational empire in the world. The Akkadian Empire existed for a short time between 2334-2218 BCE, and […]

A pioneering aerospace vehicle made its debut powered flight last week – and it was all thanks to a monstrous aircraft armed with a wingspan longer than a football field. With a wingspan of 117 meters (384 feet), Stratolaunch’s Roc is considered the world’s largest plane in operation. When empty, the twin-body plane weighs a […]

For the last several years, cosmologists and astronomers have been facing a major tension in our understanding of the cosmos. The expansion rate of the universe continues to be two different numbers depending on how we try and measure it. The cosmic microwave background – first free light in the universe – gives a value. […]

You’ve probably heard the 5-a-day rule intended to help us reach our nutritional needs with fruit and veg – but when diets fall short, vitamin supplements have long been used as a way to make up for the shortfall. But do they really work?  Or, as some have suggested, do vitamins just give us expensive […]

The longest river in the world is the Nile, right? Well, maybe. Maybe not, though. The question of Earth’s longest river sounds like some simple trivia that scientists should have sorted out centuries ago. However, you might be surprised to hear how much controversy and contention surrounds the geographical record-holder. Guinness World Records, as well […]

While the excitement for next month’s total solar eclipse is building for us humans, April 8 might see our animal pals acting a little bit weirder than usual. What happened during the solar eclipse in 2017? Though there had been anecdotal evidence of strange animal antics during historical solar eclipses, the last total solar eclipse […]

Signs that Martian gravity is influencing the Earth’s climate have been found in sediments on the deep ocean floor. Long climatic cycles triggered by resonance between the two planets’ orbits have been predicted by models, but geologic evidence has been sparse. The scientists who spotted this pattern are wary of leaping to conclusions, but say […]

How does a rubber witch’s finger travel from a Halloween party to the belly of a Mediterranean sea turtle? It’s anyone’s guess, but the novelty finding does provide a grim insight into how seemingly innocuous plastic products can work their way into marine environments and tragically impact the life within them.  In a new study, […]

Regional accents are not just a human thing: Bottlenose dolphins have them, and new research reveals they can be different even between two populations whose separation is not impassable. The New Zealand accent is so distinctive the national airline made its incomprehensibility a feature of its advertising. That, however, may be nothing to the dolphins, […]

A small municipality in Finland could soon be home to a big ol’ battery, and a pretty unusual one at that – it stores thermal energy in sand. It’s hoped this “sand battery” could increase the storage of renewable energy to meet year-round heating demands, and with it, help cut carbon emissions. The battery is […]

Whether it’s catching a baseball, learning to drive, or simply picking up an object, most of us are familiar with the concept of hand-eye coordination. But have you ever stopped to think about foot-eye coordination? Using virtual reality (VR) technology, new research is illuminating how the brain’s visual processing falls in step with our movements […]

This article first appeared in Issue 17 of our free digital magazine CURIOUS.  Ilulissat Icefjord – the sea mouth of the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier – is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that boasts some pretty impressive accolades. Located on the west coast of Greenland, it’s one of only a handful of glaciers that connects the Greenland […]

Within a deep canyon that humans had not laid eyes on before, scientists discovered at least 100 new marine species, each more weird and wonderful than the last.  The ocean critters were recently found within the Bounty Trough off the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island during a three-week voyage on the research vessel […]

Thanks to our orbits, Earth and Mars make relatively close passes every 26 months. Every now and then, there’s a really close approach. In 2003, for instance, we passed at a distance of 55.7 million kilometers (34.6 million miles), the closest the two planets have been to each other in 60,000 years. In 1924, the […]

Meet the Brazilian wandering spiders in the genus Phoneutria, also referred to as the armed spiders or the banana spiders. The members of this group have one of the most dangerous bites of any spider species on Earth and they have been classified as the world’s most venomous spider many times. Where Do Brazilian Wandering […]

The edge of the solar system is different and the rules that govern the formation and interaction of bodies there are likely to be different too. This region is known as the Kuiper Belt, stretching from the orbit of Neptune outward. For the first time, the surface composition of two small trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) has […]